 |
| Education and the Significance of Life by J. Krishnamurti |
Full Lesson
Krishnamurti had a life-long interest in education, and Education and the Significance of Life is the earliest and most expository of his books on the subject. Focusing on the central vision that life 'has a wider and deeper significance, and that it is the concern of education to come upon it', he explores various other connected themes authority versus freedom discipline, intelligence, the nature of creativity and the role of religion in education. Krishnamurti stresses that an environment free of fear is essential for creating an atmosphere in which real education can take place. (alert-warning)
Before you read:
- Close your eyes for a minute. Reflect on the word 'education'. Open your eyes and write freely for four or so minutes your ideas on education. Share your writing with your classmates.
When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe of Australia. This is especially true in colleges and universities. We are turning out, as if through a mould, a type of human being whose chief interest is to find security, to become somebody important, or to have a good time with as little thought as possible.
Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity. To be different from the group or to resist environment is not easy and is often risky as long as we worship success. The urge to be successful, which is the pursuit of reward whether in the material or in the so-called spiritual sphere, the search for inward or outward security, the desire for comfort-this whole process smothers discontent, puts an end to spontaneity and breeds fear; and fear blocks the intelligent understanding of life. With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in lite where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion. This fear of life, this fear of struggle and of new experience, kills in us the spirit of adventure; our whole upbringing and education have made us afraid to be different from our neighbour, afraid to think contrary to the established pattern of society, falsely respectful of authority and tradition.
Fortunately, there are a few who are in earnest, who are willing to examine our human problems without the prejudice of the right or of the left; but in the vast majority of us, there is no real spirit of discontent, of revolt. When we yield uncomprehendingly to environment, any spirit of revolt that we may have had dies down, and our responsibilities soon put an end to it.
Revolt is of two kinds; there is violent revolt, which is mere reaction, without understanding, against the existing order; and there is the deep psychological revolt of intelligence. There are many who revolt against the established orthodoxies only to fall into new orthodoxies, further illusion ana concealed self-indulgences. What generally happens is that we break away from one group or set of ideals and join another group, take up other ideals, thus creating a new pattern of thought against which we will again have to revolt. Reaction only breeds opposition, and reform needs further reform.
But there is an intelligent revolt which is not reaction, and which comes with self-knowledge through the awareness of one's own thought and feeling. It is only when we face experience as it comes and do not avoid disturbance that we keep intelligence highly awakened; and intelligence highly awakened is intuition, which is the only true guide in life.
Now, what is the significance of life? What are we living and struggling for? If we are being educated merely to achieve distinction, to get a better job, to be more efficient, to have wider domination over others, then our lives will be shallow and empty. If we are being educated only to be scientists, to be scholars wedded to books, or specialists addicted to knowledge, then we shall be contributing to the destruction and misery of the world.
Though there is a higher and wider significance to life, of what value is our education if we never discover it? We may be highly educated, but if we are without deep integration of thought and feeling, our lives are incomplete, contradictory and torn with many fears; and as long as education does not cultivate an integrated outlook on life, it has very little significance.
In our present civilization we have divided life into so many departments that education has very little meaning, except in learning a particular technique or profession. Instated of awakening the integrated intelligence of the individual, education is encouraging him to conform to a pattern and so is hindering his comprehension of himself as a total process. To attempt to solve the many problems of existence at their respective levels, separated as they are into various categories, indicates an utter lack of comprehension.
The individual is made up of different entities, but to emphasize the differences and to encourage the development of a definite type leads to many complexities and contradictions. Education should bring about the integration of these separate entities-for without integration, life becomes a series of conflicts and sorrows. Of what value is it to be trained as lawyers if we perpetuate litigation? Of what value is knowledge if we continue in our confusion? What significance has technical and industrial capacity if we use it to destroy one another? What is the point of our existence if it leads to violence and utter misery? Though we may have money or are capable of earning it, though we have our pleasures and our organized religions, we are in endless conflict.
We must distinguish between the personal and the individual. The personal is the accidental; and by the accidental I mean the circumstances of birth, the environment in which we happen to have been brought up, with its nationalism, superstitions, class distinctions and prejudices. The personal or accidental is but momentary, though that moment may last a life time; and as the present system of education is based on the personal, the accidental, the momentary, it leads to perversion of thought and the inculcation of self-defensive fears.
All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security, and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear. Such a training must inevitably bring confusion and misery to ourselves and to the world, for it creates in each individual those psychological barriers which separate and hold him apart from others.
Education is not merely a matter of training the mind. Training makes for efficiency, but it does not bring about completeness. A mind that has merely been trained is the continuation of the past, and such a mind can never discover the new. That is why, to find out what is right education, we will have to inquire into the whole significance of living.
To most of us, the meaning of life as a whole is not of primary importance, and our education emphasizes secondary values, merely making us proficient in some branch of knowledge. Though knowledge and efficiency are necessary, to lay chief emphasis on them only leads to conflict and confusion.
There is an efficiency inspired by love which goes far beyond and is much greater than the efficiency of ambition; and without love, which brings an integrated understanding of life, efficiency breeds ruthlessness. Is this not what is actually taking place all over the world? Our present education is geared to industrialization and war, its principal aim being to develop efficiency; and we are caught in this machine of ruthless competition; and mutual destruction. If education leads to war, if it teaches us to destroy or be destroyed, has it not utterly failed?
To bring about right education, we must obviously understand the meaning of life as a whole, and for that we have to be able to think, not consistently, but directly and truly. A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove. We cannot understand existence abstractly or theoretically. To understand life is understand ourselves and that is both the beginning and the end of education.
Education is not merely acquiring knowledge, gathering and correlating facts; it is to see the significance of life as a whole. But the whole cannot be approached through the part-which is what governments, organized religions and authoritarian parties are attempting to do.
The function of education is to create human beings who are integrated and therefore intelligent. We may take degrees and be mechanically efficient without being intelligent. Intelligence is not mere information; it is not derived from books, nor does it consist of clever self-defensive responses and aggressive assertions. One who has not studied may be more intelligent than the learned. We have made examinations and degrees the criterion of intelligence and have developed cunning minds that avoid vital human issues. Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education.
Education should help us to discover lasting values so that we do not merely cling to formulas or repeat slogans; it should help us to break down our national and social barriers, instead of emphasizing them, for they breed antagonism between man and man. Unfortunately, the present system of education is making us subservient, mechanical and deeply thoughtless; though it awakens us intellectually, inwardly it leaves us incomplete, stultified and uncreative.
Without an integrated understanding of life, our individual and collective problems will only deepen and extend. The purpose of education is not to produce mere scholars, technicians, and job hunters, but integrated men and women who are free of fear; for only between such human beings can there be enduring peace.
It is in the understanding of ourselves that fear comes to an end. If the individual is to grapple with life from moment to moment, if he is to face its intricacies, its miseries and sudden demands, he must be infinitely pliable and therefore free of theories and particular patterns of thought.
Education should not encourage the individual to conform to society or to be negatively harmonious with it, but help him to discover the true values which come with unbiased investigation and self-awareness. When there is no self-knowledge, self-expression becomes self-assertion, with all its aggressive and ambitious conflicts. Education should awaken the capacity to be self-aware and not merely indulge in gratifying self-expression.
What is the good of learning if in the process of living we are destroying ourselves? As we are having a series of devastating wars, one right after another there is obviously something radically wrong with the way we bring up our children. I think most of us are aware of this, but we do not know how to deal with it.
Systems, whether educational or political, are not changed mysteriously; they are transformed when there is a fundamental change in ourselves. The individual is of first importance not the system; and as long as the individual does not understand the total process of himself, no system, whether of the left or of the right, can bring order and peace to the world.
by J. Krishnamurti in Education and the Significance of Life
EXERCISES
A. Use the following words/expressions in your own sentences:
- conventional education
- conformity
- revolt
- intelligent revolt
- self-knowledge
- intelligence
- litigation
- acquisitive fear
- efficiency
- completeness
- consistent thinker
- aggressive assertions
B. Answer the following questions:
1. What are the similarities in human nature that the writer notices around the world?
2. What type of education is conventional education?
3. 'Conformity leads to mediocrity'. Do you agree with the writer? Justify your answer.
4. How can education be used to discover the wider and deeper significance of life?
5. Explore the meanings of intelligence, intuition as implied in the passage and relate them to broader aim of education.
6. Elaborate on the writer's notion of deep psychological revolt. How is it different from the violent revolt?
7. What does self-knowledge mean? How can it be acquired? What is its relevance to our life?
8. What is the significance of life? What is the writer's answer to this question?
9. Do you agree with the writer's notions of the personal and the individual? Which one do you prefer-personality or individuality? Explain in brier.
10. The writer distinguishes between primary and secondary values. In your opinion what are the primary values of life that our education should foster?
11. What's the writer's comment on a consistent thinker?
C. Beyond the text:
1. What is the difference between being intelligent and being intellectual? Which one do you think the need of our time? Why?
2. Visit J. Krishnamurti official channel on YouTube. Watch one of his talks or interviews on Freedom, Who Are You? or Attention. Then summarize it in your own words.
3. Why do you think the author has given priority to the individual, not the system? What sorts of tension do you perceive between the individual and the society or state as a system?
D. Assignments:
1. Knowledge is supposed to lead the knower from darkness to brightness, from doubts to clarity in life. But it is often the case that most educated people are found in confusion, in conflict and in constant psychological fear. If this is the case, what sorts of change do you think are necessary in the existing education systems in terms of goals, attitudes, teaching-learning process, learning materials and evaluation system. Write an argumentative essay in about 800 words.
2. Write a descriptive essay introducing a famous educationist in Nepal. What are him or her standpoints? Illustrate fully.
Summary
All human beings seem to have similar nature – we want to find security and have a good time with as less effort as possible. We try to do this by earning more money, by becoming important persons and building other forms of security around ourselves. These achievements become important to us as these give us comfort. The urge to be successful along these lines creates a fear of not being able to attain these goals. Even after we reach these goals, protecting the comfort we get from them becomes very important, and we continue to be fearful. This fear makes us scared on new experiences and adventures. We are afraid to be different, to follow a course of action different from established societal norms. We confirm to authority and tradition.
Current education system is built around the achievement of these goals. This system builds skills, emphasizes techniques, capacity and efficiency. We start to depend on these for our psychological security and that does not help. We continue to live fearfully, contributing to the misery and destruction in the world. Conventional education contributes to the conflicts we experience around us, within ourselves, with fellow humans and with nature. This cannot be right, as right kind of education should be free us of conflicts within, help us build relationships with other people, environment and society, should lead men and countries living peacefully with each other and universal peace.
Krishnamurthy says that we are all disillusioned with the current education system, but we don’t know what to do, what to pursue, what kind of questions we need to ask and address to bring up our children. Systems cannot be blamed for our plight and we cannot expect miraculous changes in the current system. The individual is important, he should bring about a change in himself by understanding himself and the total process of self-awareness will bring in peace to the world.
Key Points to Remember
- He begins his essay with the concept of human nature. For him, human nature is the same whether in India, in America, in Europe or anywhere. The chief interest of human being is to find security, to be important or to have a good time with as little thought as possible.
- He begins his essay with the concept of human nature. For him, human nature is the same whether in india or America In Europe or anywhere. The chief interest of human being is to find security, to be important or to have a good time with as little thought as possible.
- He states that conventional education leads to conformity which ultimately leads to mediocrity (low quality/intelligence)
- It is risky and not easy task to be different from other and we are seeking comfort. Seeking comfort leads us an end to spontaneity and breeds fear. This fear of struggle kills the spirit of adventure. Our education has made us afraid and to be different from our neighbor, afraid to challenges, the established pattern and authority of society.
- The writer states that there are two types of revolts: violent revolt and psychological revolt.
- Violent revolt is mere a reaction without understanding. It is a revolt against the established orthodoxies to fall into new orthodoxies and illusion.
- On the other, psychological revolt is an intellectual revolt arising through awareness and through intuition; which is a true guide of life.
- He says, we are being educated merely to achieve distinction, to get a better job, to be more efficient, to have wider domination over others then our life is shallow and empty. We are being educated to be only to be scientist, scholars and shall be contributing to destruction and misery of the world.
- Thus we should cultivate integration in life. Our life is made up of different entities. Our education should bring about the integration of these separate entities. Without integration life becomes a series of conflict and sorrows.
- Material prosperity can have pleasure but finally leads us to endless thought.
- The education should emphasize integration and completeness.
- He distinguishes between the personal and individual. He says that personal is accidental. It is conditioned by birth and environment where we have been brought up with nationalism, superstition, and class distinction.
- Present education system is based on accidental circumstances which may destruct the world. So individual knowledge with harmony, peace and integrity is needed everywhere.
- We have just been trained by education which is based on exploitation, fear, confuse and misery.
- Our education should focus on primary values rather than secondary one which can challenge the obstacles of life creating peace and integrity in the world, to see the significance life as a whole.
- We need efficiency inspired by love than inspired by ambition. Our education is geared to industrialization and war. So we must understand the meaning of life as a whole. To understand life is to understand ourselves and beginning and end of education.
- Education is not only gaining knowledge but to know the significance of life.
- So education should help us to discover lasting values and break down social and national barriers.
Credit: Resham Dumre, WMC, Syangja (Key Notes), Venu GVGK, Interdisciplinary Reading (Book) (alert-success)
